May 15, 2011
A Quick Note: Lulu Book
Posted by Evelyn Mervine
I want to give you a quick update on the status of the book “Conversations with My Dad, a Nuclear Engineer, about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster in Japan” which I plan to self-publish on Lulu. I am still working on putting this book together, albeit in my very limited free time. Now that I’m back from my South Africa trip, I’m working 10-12 hour lab days to finish up the labwork for my PhD thesis. The good news is that the interviews are all transcribed now (thanks to my volunteers; if I haven’t sent you a rock yet I’ll do so in the next few weeks), so I just need to finish editing and compiling them.
My plan is to have the book available on Lulu around the first week of June. I want to include a few pictures of my father and I in the “extra” chapter. I was compiling some photographs, and I realized that my dad and I have not taken a picture together since my college graduation back in 2006! I’d like to include a recent picture of my dad and I. Fortunately (maybe unfortunately for him), my dad is visiting me on June 1st to help me move out of my apartment, so we’ll do our best to take some photos then to include in the book. You should expect the book on Lulu shortly thereafter. The interviews will of course be out-of-date, but there is still plenty of good information and explanation in these interviews, much of which will still be relevant even three months after the nuclear disaster began. Also, our interviews tell a story, in a way, of the first month of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
As a reminder to everyone, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is far from over. There has been so much damage to the Fukushima reactors 1-3 and the spent fuel pools at reactors 1-4 that restoration of normal cooling systems will still take months. Meanwhile, the situation at Fukushima remains precarious.
Great idea. Please keep us informed. This would be a great thing to get.
Greetings and Salutations….Glad to hear that you are through the SA trip. It does sound as if it was fairly productive, and, I have to say that I was interested to see the photos you took of the rock wear patterns.I can sympathize with your struggles with the "Fukushima book"! It often seems as if that sort of thing takes 10x the time we expect. At least it will be a valuable resource when you DO get it done!As for the Fukushima situation itself, I have to say that one good thing that has come from it is the continuing discussion about nuclear power plant design, and, utilizing nuclear power to keep society going in the future. I surfed through one of the "talking heads" channels the other day, and, saw the tail-end of exactly that sort of discussion – dealing with the generations of design, and, what to do to make them safer, etc. It was a relatively calm discussion too, which was a bit of a surprise, since Nuclear Power tends to be a hot-button topic, like alcohol, abortion, gun control, etc…